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US shutdown

The deadline for the US to avoid default is looming large but there are few signs of a resolution to the bitter budgetary dispute. For the very latest from Washington DC, we're joined by the Financial Review's US Correspondent John Kehoe.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann met libertarian groups that are now playing a major role in the United States government shutdown and potential default during a three-week overseas study tour.

Senator Cormann's last meeting in Washington during a 2011 trip was with Grover Norquist, the prominent president of the Americans for Tax Reform, which asks political candidates to put in writing that they will oppose ''any and all tax increases''. Mr Norquist is also a board member of the National Rifle Association.

Senator Cormann also met six members of the Heritage Foundation, a tax-exempt think tank. The foundation's political offshoot, Heritage Action for America, has guided efforts to withdraw funding on US President Barack Obama's flagship healthcare policy, the Affordable Care Act.

Mathias Cormann spent three weeks in the US. Photo: Glenn Hunt

Senator Cormann then met Matt Kibbe and Wayne Brough, of the Tea Party group Freedom Works.

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A recent New York Times piece detailed how shortly after President Obama won a second term, dozens of conservative activists agreed on a blueprint to defund ObamaCare, as it is known, by cutting off financing for the federal government.

Without a deal between Democrats and Republicans to raise the cap on government borrowing, the US is set to violate its debt limit on Thursday. The prospect of the world's biggest economy defaulting on its debt for the first time has sparked fears of another financial crisis.

Senator Cormann's meetings, in 2011 when he was serving as Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, are detailed in his parliamentary overseas study travel report.

Senator Cormann said the trip was designed to ''explore United States economic fiscal and monetary policy, the approach to financial services regulation after the global financial crisis, to discuss US policy on emissions trading and generally to develop and deepen relationships with the US''.

''Meetings during my visit to the United States provided me with very useful insights into a broad range of policy issues relevant to my area of shadow portfolio responsibilities,'' he told former Special Minister for State Gary Gray.

''Discussions with a broad cross-section of policy thinkers and practitioners in relation to the global economy, US fiscal and monetary policy, taxation and tax reform, financial services, regulation and the likely approach in the US to emissions trading will help shape my contribution to those policy issues.''